Retribution

Alice watched in horror as the mutated screechling finished its gory meal and moved onto the next enclosure, the smaller bat within it frantically hissing in a weak attempt at intimidation.

The creature had changed during her sleep. It was now more than a meter tall, with wide wings ending in two long fingers; its rear wings had turned into short digitigrade legs, each equipped with three sharp talons that left small gashes on the stone floor as it awkwardly hopped to its next prey.

It’s not huge but I need to take it out fast, I don’t know how much it has changed. I can’t take risks.

She waited until the new monster had started to claw at the stones that formed the second enclosure, then, Alice quickly squeezed herself out of the safe alcove and started silently moving towards her weapons.

She had barely taken a step when she saw the monster freeze, its large ears instantly facing backwards, in her direction.

It quickly turned towards her and she recoiled as she took a look at its horrid new visage.

The wide maw of the pale bat was now surrounded by a corona of deep, irregular bores much like a lotus root, or something ridden of parasites. Alice’s skin started crawling, an innate feeling of wrongness in the trypophobia-inducing pattern.

Alice unconsciously took a step back, the blind horror bristling at the movement; she was preparing to dash towards the knife when she saw the glow of its body flow and coalesce around its throat and facial cavities.

She only had time to whisper a small ‘oh no’ before the creature’s jaw unhinged with a click and an air-shattering scream erupted from within.

The water in the pool started vibrating, shimmering droplets splattering all over the place in a coruscating display of motion; an instant later, the sound wave hit Alice as she tried taking cover behind the stalagmites.

She uselessly attempted to cover her ears, to shield herself from the all-encompassing screech of the monster. Pain exploded in her head as her eardrums burst, the soundwave too much for the thin membranes; her own pained screaming now muted in a sea of silent vibrations.

Still, the sudden lack of noise had the positive effect of grounding her, helping her react despite the agony. Alice immediately tore through the barrier of her power and flooded her pain receptors, granting herself an instant of respite.

She could feel the trickles of blood flowing through her ears and nostrils, a growing pressure in her eyes that let her know she wouldn’t be able to withstand the sound for long.

Alice immediately rushed towards her weapons, grasping one of the throwing spikes and sending it flying towards the creature.

The projectile struck true, hitting the chest of the shrieker and causing it to recoil, interrupting its sonic attack. As she felt the strain on her organs disappear, she took the chance to finally grasp her knife and rush towards her foe.

The monster screeched in her direction, the light once again flaring around its mouth as it released another burst of concentrated sound towards her.

Alice felt the pressure hit her once again, warm blood now flowing freely and copiously out of her eyes, nose and ears.

As she got closer, her own heart started painfully jumping in her chest, an irregular and intermittent beat that scared her more than anything else.

She dug as deep as possible into her well, squeezing every ounce of warmth into a wave of burning power that her body instantly turned into pure unbridled adrenaline. Alice felt the muscles in her legs bulge and then tear as they launched her towards the monster.

As the knife’s edge finally connected with the creature, a primal, rage-filled scream bloomed from deep within her chest. The girl effortlessly directed the blade of her dagger as it sheared through the neck of the shrieking horror with a single fluid movement; the vibrations immediately ceasing, large spurts of blood spraying her body as she quickly drifted into unconsciousness.

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You have reached Level 9 in the Biomancer Class.

You have developed the Word of Power Aestus. You may draw from your well to activate it.

—————

Alice was once again in the silent, dark room; the new words hovering in the black void just below the previous ones, each phrase a proof of the changes happening inside of her.

A new one uh?

Also, what the heck was that?

That thing just evolved like a damn Pokémon!

I really hope I’m not gonna die while sleeping. I shouldn’t, right? Right?? Also, I need to heal my eardrums as quickly as possible, can’t lose such an important sense when I can barely see.

Anyway. No more experiments on the glowing water for now. At least not on animals. I still have to understand it, it could be my way out.

…that thing was horrifying on so many levels.

Even in her “astral” form, she felt shivers run down her spine at the memory of the creature’s hole-filled face.

Let’s try not to think about it. Focus on the now Alice.

Aestus… if I remember correctly from my Latin classes it means something like wave or surge, so I think I developed it during my last fight. It also feels more general, as if it has more than one use, where Hemostasis works only on that specific process, this one simply means a wave of something, right now it worked with the adrenaline, but I might be able to find more uses if I think hard enough.

And I’m level 9 now, whatever that means. I wonder what is the maximum achievable and if there is a cap.

Her flow of consciousness continued for a while, her mind spewing out thought after thought, trying to steer her away from the memories of the creatures she had fought so far.

Finally, as the void around her stirred, she felt a pull on her floating form, the words fading as she quickly came back to consciousness.

She opened her eyes, her vision clearing enough for her to immediately scramble back with a terrorized cry as the severed head of the evolved screechling was resting only a couple centimeters away from her face, its pointed tongue lolling out the teeth-filled maw.

Alice stumbled while trying to get up on her feet, a sudden, dizzying vertigo preventing her from any kind of upright movement. She had to lower herself on the ground once again as a wave of nausea turned over her stomach. Between heaving breaths, the girl finally took notice of the endless ringing and strange wetness that seemed to be filling her inner ear.

Oh damn, the ears are connected to the sense of balance.

She closed her eyes, trying to prevent the room from spinning, ignoring the indistinct shape of the bloodied carcass of the monster a couple meters away, and slowly dragging herself towards the blurred light of the pool, activating its light out of safety.

Only when she was on the water’s edge did she focus inwardly, following a large pathway of nerves right into the mess that were her inner ears. Alice could feel the strange shape of the system she was in, a number of interconnected bone ducts forming a strange tridimensional shape akin to a nautilus or snail.

It was composed of a hollow spiraling round ‘shell’, a wider canal filled with thick fluids and membranes, and three smaller, semicircular tubes that seemed to have taken the brunt of the damage from the sonic attack.

While inspecting the strange organs, she instinctually knew most of them should have been filled with some sort of liquid, which would flow in one way or the other and somehow inform her brain of the position of her body in any space she found herself in.

Instead, the canals had been broken down by the blast, cracks marred the bone as the clear fluid within dripped into the main ear duct, flowing around tiny, dislodged bones and torn flesh to finally mix with the blood flowing from her other wounds.

Traveling deeper inside the ‘shell’, Alice found herself in a small cave littered with thousands upon thousands of hair-like strands, each connected to a nerve that sent signals to the brain, that is, if they hadn’t all been broken down and damaged by the blasts of compressed sound.

Well, that’s not good. This is not something I can just close up and wait for it to heal itself… I don’t even know if it happens normally. I guess it’s another reason to try and improve my Biomancy.

She slowly opened the gates to her core, releasing a trickle of warmth that she slowly guided towards the damaged structures. There, Alice increased her body’s regeneration tenfold, and, over the course of many hours, witnessed the softer tissues start to slowly heal.

The ripped eardrum was the first to knit up, the thin layer sealing with a soft pop as the pressure changed between the two sides of the membrane.

She then watched as the three, tiny bones that connected the membrane with the deeper canals were brought back to their normal condition; the hammer, anvil and stirrup once again started transmitting sounds to the still damaged inner ear.

When she finished repairing the damaged outer structures, Alice started focusing on the inner ear, where she managed to temporarily plug the cracks in the thin, brittle bone of the canals with a lattice of bone cells that, in time, would become the wall itself.

She knew the fluid in the tube would fill up normally once the bone healed, so she left the repairs proceed independently while she managed the more difficult restoration progress.

While the human body was absolutely excellent at repairing and finding new connections to make up for injuries and deficits, the same wasn’t true for actual, true reconstruction.

She had to do it herself.

But before that, I need a break.

Her vision returned, still blurry and nauseating but less so than before her healing session.

Feeling the effect the magic had on her metabolism, she slowly and tiredly butchered one of the dead screechling, swallowing its slimy and cold flesh with a healthy amount of magical numbing in her mouth.

Then, on a whim, she slid out of her tattered clothes and into the pool, letting herself float in the shallow fluid as the fresh, glowing water rippled around her body, washing away the dirt and tiredness coating her body and mind.

Ignoring the organisms flowing inside of her through her many open wounds, Alice followed closely the process which let them fuse and become one with her own cells, strengthening them in exchange for a safe haven of growth and evolution.

She let them become part of her.